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Measuring Engagement In Games
Gamasutra is running an article written by Tim Hong of EmSense in which he describes the research his company did into the physiological reactions various games engender in players. In addition to outward cues like breathing and movement, EmSense also scans brainwaves and heart activity to provide a more complete picture of how a gamer is responding to what he sees and does. They collected hundreds of hours worth of data and made comparisons among a variety of shooters, such as Gears of War 2, F.E.A.R, and Half-Life 2. They found some interesting information on how pacing, tutorials, and cutscenes can affect a player's level of engagement with the games.
While this could no doubt lead to some more interesting shooter games (a welcome change since it's been a while since an FPS not made by Valve has really struck me as top-grade), I'd personally be more curious to see the difference in engagement across genres - FPS, RTS, RPG, etc. I know that I personally get much more engaged into RPGs.
One of the most engaging games I have played this year. I don't play too many games, but the single player campaign in modern warfare was extremely appealing to me. [I played COD 1 and then COD4 was the next COD game I played]
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NOTE: SPOILERS BELOW
SPOILERS BEGIN...............
The initial mission where you need to escape a ship which is drowning and make a desperate attempt to jump into the helicopter, being assassinated at close range and unable to do anything about it, the nuclear explosion thing, crawling in a field with just a sniper rifle and tens of troupes walking around you and the way the climax plays out with Price throwing you a gun, having to take headshots before finally killing the main antagonist.. Call of Duty 4 impressed me so much that I don't even want to buy COD 5 just in case it ruins the experience I had with COD 4.
END OF SPOILERS
... and I shall strike upon thee with great vegeance, furious anger and a slightly positive karma.
Hundreds of hours? What does that translate to in number of players, distributed on age-groups and types of games? I could of course read the article, but experience makes me suspect it is unlikely to tell me. Even if is only about one type of game, or simply one game, full stop, "hundreds of hours" doesn't seem like much of a sample in statistical terms, which would make their results seem a bit dubious.
What I feel is the problem here is that there are far too many reports of results that have little weight on their own. This doesn't make the individual pieces of research invalid, but it does mean that we can't really conclude much from the results until enough projects have been conducted and somebody has done the proper "meta-research" on the combined dataset.
I bet his problem was he played it on the Xbox360, and we know of course that has mediocre graphics.
I thought it was a good game, played on the PC at least. Admittedly, I only really played the single player mode as I was unimpressed with the multiplayer.
I wonder if this is a case of "I hate the game because I bought the competing game" or "I hate the game because it isn't shiny, and I just on the shininess not gameplay."
This is not the funny you're looking for.
I am -so- glad someone finally put this in writing. Hopefully every game developer from here out will read this article and have some clue how to keep a gamer entralled.
Some games already do it, and others utterly fail. At this point, I only have time to play the games that succeed at this (the ones that fail just can't keep me playing... There's always something better to do.)
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
I think there is too much in this that's subjective though. One person may find a game highly engaging and allow themselves to become immersed, while someone else just plays games and ignores/doesn't allow themselves to get into it.
A simple movie example would be Blair Witch Project. There's nothing actually gorey/freaky in it, but if you allow the atmosphere and story to pull you in, it's very scary. On the other hand, I know several teens that told me it was completely lame/unscary because of that lack of visual content.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
They are measuring "emotional engagement", which, if correct, is still not a measure of "fun".
For instance, the reason engagement may have dropped for Halo 3's cinematic sequences, for me, is that combat up to that point had been intense enough that the cutscene was a chance to relax for a moment. So, less adrenaline, maybe even less emotion at the moment, but I'd still consider them to be some of the best cutscenes -- particularly the random Cortana moments.
Halo 2 even moreso -- I wonder what kind of reading they got from "Return to Sender".
Similarly, while it is nice to have a given boss exist only once, that doesn't necessarily mean that subsequent battles are not fun -- why else replay a game, for instance? Just because the novelty is gone doesn't mean the fun is.
It just goes to show that you cannot provide a single measure as to the quality of a game.
That said, ever since my first Gauntlet kill in Quake 3, I've always felt it extremely unsatisfying when a shooter doesn't provide some sort of meelee weapon. I love Nexuiz for what it is, but I would love it even more if, when I somehow managed to get in close behind someone, I could hit them with something more fun than shotgun alternate fire.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!